Friday, May 20, 2011

The Audacity of Idiocy

After hearing Obama’s Middle East speech yesterday, I read a comment that one of my Jewish friend’s posted. She said, “This is one of the worst days of my life. I feel sick.” Was she just being dramatic? Or were her strong feelings justified?

If you didn’t hear Obama’s speech, here it is in a nutshell: Blah, blah, blah, pre-1967 borders blah, blah, blah.

Those three words are what left my friend and so many others who love the Jews living in Israel, disgusted, angry, and feeling sick. Because pre-1967 borders can mean only one thing to Israel. Death.

Rewinding to pre-1967 borders would leave Israel 9 miles wide in one area. Did that register? Nine. Miles. Wide. Tell me this. Would you live in a town less than 10 miles away from a mass of people who had publically declared that they want to kill you and your children? (Psst, and they didn’t make that declaration just once and just recently. Let’s just call that declaration of hate and death a pre-1967 declaration.)

Rewinding to pre-1967 borders would leave Israel’s airport 3 miles away from a hotbed of Hamas devotees. (Psst, Hamas is a terrorist organization.) Tell me this. Would you take off from an airport less than 3 miles away from a mass of people who had publically declared that they want to kill you and your children and who had an arsenal of surface-to-air missiles?

Rewinding to pre-1967 borders would take away Israel’s strategic protective mountain ranges. U.S. Lieut. General Thomas Kelly, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War, once pointed out that Israel would be virtually indefensible without those mountainous areas. He said, “I look out from those heights and look onto the West Bank and say to myself, ‘If I’m the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, I cannot defend this land without that terrain.'” It doesn’t take a Liet. General to know that.

Rewinding to pre-1967 borders could endanger Israel’s water supply. A significant portion of Israel’s water originates in Judea-Samaria. A retreat to the 1967 borders would leave these crucial water sources under Arab control. Tell me this. Would you drink or let your children drink water from an area controlled by people who had publically declared that they want to kill you and your children?

Rewinding to pre-1967 borders would divide Jerusalem. The Temple Mount, the Western Wall, the Jewish Quarter and the Mount of Olives cemetery would all be turned over to the Arabs. Talk about a psychological and spiritual death. Have you seen the way Arabs treat Jewish holy sites? Have you seen what they did to Joseph’s tomb? Do you know that Arabs have a little national pastime of murdereing Jews at Jewish holy sites? Have you seen the footage of Palestinians rampaging the Temple Mount last week? It was a swath of irreverential destruction; physically and spiritually. Tell me this. How would you feel if the synagogue or church you went to or the cemetery your family was buried in was about to be given to a group of people who had publically declared that they want to kill you and your children?

For those who truly love Israel and its people, the thought of pre-1967 borders is one of the worst scenarios imaginable for Israel. Unless . . . unless the thought of a world leader suggesting this wakes up Israel. The only thing that calms my fears for Israel and my frustrations over the stupid, arrogant, audacity of Obama is to remember that Obama is only a pawn in Hashem’s hand.

“Why do nations gather, and regimes talk in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand against Hashem and his anointed [Israel]. But He who sits in heaven will laugh, and will mock them. Then in His anger and wrath He will terrify them. For Hashem annuls the counsel of nations, He thwarts the designs of peoples,” per Psalms 2 & 33.

G-d let Obama become president. He let those words come out of his mouth yesterday. Now the question is, how will the Jews respond? Will this be the straw? Will this be the turning point of Jews waking up and turning to the G-d of Israel for advice, for direction, for protection, instead of turning to the nations. I hope so. I pray so. Because the other alternative is unimaginably heartbreaking.